Appointment scheduling tools often offer similar functions that are tailored to the needs of customers. These appointment scheduling tools come from all over the world, whereby for a company from the European Economic Area (EEA) only the use of us tools is problematic. With the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling of July 16, 2020, many users of us tools are once again faced with the fact that they may no longer be used due to customer data protection.1 Possible contracts such as the US Privacy Shield will no longer be supported. As a result, US providers must rely on European server locations to ensure data processing in the EEA.
Large appointment scheduling software providers such as Calendly are struggling to meet the new requirements. Calendly has a large number of users from the EEA, but is itself a US company. Their users now need to find a new provider to protect their customers' data. Calenso covers the majority of Calendly's functionalities and surpasses them in terms of scope and customization. First things first: As a Swiss company, Calenso is GDPR-compliant. In addition, Switzerland is considered a third country compared to the EU, but Switzerland is considered appropriate for the EU in dealing with the processing of personal data. Take a look at the following overview to compare the functions of Calenso and Calendly.
You can find all information about switching or comparing with Calendly here.
Switch from Calendly to Calenso
Due to the ECJ ruling, it is advisable to switch from a US provider to a provider from the EEA. Unfortunately, the change is often time-consuming, but companies risk a high fine if they continue to exchange data with the USA. Calenso has all the basic features of Calendly and many more. Take a look at the list of all Calenso functions here. And: Calenso has a very high level of data protection and the server location is in Switzerland. After a test run with Calendly, we unfortunately found that there is no direct data export for the profile. There is also no alternative to downloading the data from Calendly. If you want to switch from another tool with the option of exporting data to Calenso, you can simply import the data into Calenso. So nothing is lost. Switch to Calenso today!
Why is data transfer to the USA a problem?
There are two different main approaches that are problematic with data transmission in the USA. On the one hand, various tools are installed on websites these days that operate in the background and without the user's active knowledge. For example, if someone surfs on a website that has installed a so-called Facebook pixel, the person transmits data to Facebook as a user of this website, although he/she is not a Facebook user him/herself. Therefore, the principle "I don't want it, I don't use it" does not apply here. Secondly, authorities in the USA have to meet much stricter requirements in order to access personal data collected by companies. In the EEA, authorities are not free to access such data, whereas in the USA they have (almost) unlimited access.
Because the data protection requirements in Europe are much higher than in the USA, the Privacy Shield Framework, which came into force in 2015, has now also failed alongside the Safe Harbor Agreement. These two agreements ensured the exchange of data between European locations and the USA, so that the exchange enjoyed the same requirements as data exchange within Europe. The Safe Harbor Agreement failed after the Snowden revelations. This showed that US authorities were able to access stored data from US companies without restriction and without any possible challenge. Now the Privacy Shield Framework has also recently failed because access rights are not restricted under this agreement either.
Conclusion: The handling of data from Europe by the US authorities is not compliant with European data protection. Personal data is not protected when data is exchanged with US parent companies, particularly from European locations. As no new agreement has yet been reached and the situation has been exacerbated by COVID-19, it is recommended to switch to providers with a server location in Europe. There are other alternatives, but they are not without risk. These can be found in the following section.
Possible alternatives for an EEA company
Possible alternatives include Standard Contractual Clauses (SCC), which are compliant with the requirements of the EU Commission. However, data protection must be guaranteed and the contract cannot just be signed. Further information on SCCs can be found under the following link (point 2 of the most important questions). Calenso recommends that users of US companies switch to alternative providers from the EEA. On the one hand, no one can predict how long a new agreement would last and therefore this question arises again. On the other hand, data protection is stable and strong, especially in EU countries and Switzerland.
Register for free with Calenso today and enjoy a carefree everyday life with online appointment booking and without worrying about data protection.
Click here for Calenso's privacy policy!
